Deep dividends from online archive
Customer Success Stories
For Mylan, a seamless and cost effective document management architecture was developed, with records stored in a secure digital record centre hosted with Iron Mountain
Challenge:
Legacy scanning and database system was soaking up resource,causing delays, and making compliance difficult
Solution:
Outsourcing to a secure Iron Mountain hosted digital records centre,with scanning services, makes online access to all documents easy
Value:
Saving up to four-years’ work while providing easy-to-use in-housefacilities and releasing valuable accommodation
Client
Mylan is the world’s third largest generic and speciality pharmaceuticals company. When, in November 2009, Generics (UK) re-branded to become part of Mylan, its goal was to become the preferred UK provider of such products. Already supplying over 60 million packs of medicine every year, Mylan has a growing portfolio of over 350 products in the UK sold to retailers and wholesalers, and throughout the NHS.
Like all pharmaceutical firms, Mylan may be called upon to provide historic documents for legal or regulatory reasons. Retention periods well in excess of ten years can be demanded. The strict requirements of bodies like the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) mean that inactive documents — for example, in respect of clinical trial results — must not be destroyed. The Mylan document archive in the UK, consisting of some three million pages, is thus a major corporate commitment.
“What became clear from the outset was that the people from Iron Mountain knew that this wasn’t a storage problem; it was a document management issue. They worked to understand our business and our requirements.”
Claire Armstrong-Brealey
UK System Administrator and, Archive Project Lead, Mylan
Challenge
Management of the Mylan archive was originally manual, but, to cut costs and improve responsiveness, an in-house scanning and database solution was implemented. That was a step forward, but a restricted number of terminals meant that queues formed as people tried to access electronic documents. Also, in some cases, scan quality was not up to acceptable standards, meaning hard copies had to be stored onsite as a safeguard.
Mylan turned to Iron Mountain for an outsourced solution. Waqar Ahmad, Business Development Executive for Mylan at Iron Mountain, says: “The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated. Document management solutions must have high standards of security, and operating procedures must be carefully documented. Efficiency and accuracy, together with a tailored solution, were key factors in the appointment of Iron Mountain as information management partner to Mylan.”
Claire Armstrong-Brealey, UK System Administrator and Archive Project Lead at Mylan, recalls: “Before we came to Iron Mountain in May 2006, we had the worst of both worlds. What became clear from the outset was that the people from Iron Mountain knew that this wasn’t a storage problem; it was a document management issue. Because of this, they didn’t just go to the archive looking for a solution, they worked to understand our business and our requirements. They took the time to get to know me. My dedicated Iron Mountain team members offered a complete range of services that could be tailored to what we needed and wanted.”
Solution
Iron Mountain works closely with its customers, tailoring a range of services into a bespoke solution to suit their specific business needs. By building a bridge between physical and digital file systems, a fully integrated environment is created. For Mylan, a seamless and cost effective document management architecture was developed, with records stored in a secure digital record centre hosted with Iron Mountain. Crucially, the investment committed to the in-house scanning and database operation was not wasted. A custom tool was designed to extract documents from the old system and transfer them to the Iron Mountain offsite servers.
Iron Mountain also scanned the Mylan deep archive (i.e. aged documents that form the full historical record of product development, testing, and accreditation processes and results). Those papers are no longer active and many may never need to be accessed again, but, ready for all eventualities, high-quality digital copies are now always available and can be rapidly retrieved. Iron Mountain has also taken over storage of the physical copies, freeing up valuable accommodation space for Mylan.
Value
Claire Armstrong-Brealey says: “We believe that in scanning the deep archive alone, Iron Mountain has saved us four or five years of work. The system we now have is logical and easy to use, meaning that our Regulatory Officers save time in accessing documents and do not waste more resource retrieving documents that may have been misplaced. In terms of accommodating our physical documents, I would guess that Iron Mountain has released half of all our available office space. The deep archive project has proved so successful that Iron Mountain is working with other parts of Mylan to see how they can help.”
Queues at terminals are a thing of the past. Using secure authentication methods, authorised Mylan employees are able to view archived documents from any internet-enabled computer. The flexibility of the solution means Mylan no longer needs to rely solely on Iron Mountain to scan its documents. Easy-to-use technology has been installed to allow Mylan people to scan documents themselves. They can then securely upload the digital copies online straight into the Iron Mountain hosted digital record centre.
Claire Armstrong-Brealey sums up: “Our Iron Mountain contacts are now a part of the team — we know each other so well that they can sort out any problems or evolving needs rapidly, effectively and always with good humour, no matter what I throw at them. Our relationship has built an effective and adaptable system which has left us smiling. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to Iron Mountain is that our storage issues used to be a senior management concern — now they don’t even need to think about it.”